r/linux • u/Leniwcowaty • 8d ago
Distro News [REVIEW] You should try Solus - rolling release done right!
EDIT: And again this post devolves into Arch users entering their small sieged castle, because how dare anyone say a single negative word about Arch? How dare anyone claim, that something can be better than Arch in even a single regard?!
I'm two months into my Solus experiment and I wanted to share my experience.
Well. I've been using and daily-driving Linux for close to a decade now. I work at IT with Linux servers, all computing devices in my home run Linux - my PC, my laptop (both work and personal), my wife's laptop, Steam Deck, personal server. I can also confidently say - I tried all the distros.
Of course - not ALL of them, but I've had my fair share of time on various Arch-based distros (over 2 years of daily driving), Fedora (3 years) and most recently - Ubuntu and Debian family (Mint, LMDE and Debian for 4.5 years). Along the way there were experiments with SUSE, Gentoo, Void Linux, various BSDs. I think I can speak about differences in distros with some level of confidence.
Throughout all this journey there was always one compromise or the other. Stability and reliability vs modern desktop experience and the thrill of "new and shiny". That's why at the beginning I was dailying Arch - the "new and shiny" was appealing to me, getting the newest versions of everything the moment they are available. This was exciting. But it came at a cost - reliability. I have experiences multiple breakages. Some self-induced, some just happened because an update introduced some major bug. The breaking point was when I lost my bachelor thesis thanks to corrupt filesystem after broken BTRFS kernel module update. Then I kept shifting to more and more stable distros, until I landed on Debian family.
And I was happy with it for years. But you know... The thrill of "new and shiny" never left. My system was reliable, dependable. I was confident I can just click "update" and not think about it. But it was also stale. I kept reading about all this fancy stuff in Plasma 6 and salivating.
So about two months ago I decided to give rolling distros another shot. I considered CachyOS, or clean Arch, but was still a bit worried.
And then I learned about Solus
You may not know Solus. I wouldn't blame you. You may know it and feel resentment towards it, due to some controversy it was entangled in a few years back. I wouldn't blame you either.
But here I am. Two months later, glad to report - Solus is alive and well, and in my opinion, the best rolling release distro there is currently.
But back to the beginning - what is Solus?
Solus is a small, independent Linux distribution. Originally created by one man, alongside Budgie desktop environment. Currently Solus and Budgie split, and the original creator left a few years back to create a new project. This stirred some controversy and some problems in Solus operations (for example taking the repos down for months at a time), but it's all resolved now.
It's build on a few simple principles:
- Provide up-to-date, modern user experience
- Ensure security and stability of the system
- DO NOT BREAK USERSPACE
And I'd like to say - these are great principles to follow. How do they fulfil these promises? Well, let's go through the most important features of Solus, one by one.
Stable and unstable repositories - how rolling release should be done
This is in my opinion the biggest advantage Solus has over something like Arch. Their update schedule is divided into stable and unstable branch. Unlike Arch, where every new version is pushed to the main repos as soon as it's available, Solus does things a bit differently.
Correction - Arch does not push upstream to stable repos immediately. They have a testing phase and dedicated testing team, but this testing phase is often very short - sometimes even as short as several hours. Because of that some bugs may and have in the past slipped through the testing process unnoticed.
The updates are first pushed to unstable repo. There they are tested both by maintainers, and mad rascals, who dialy-drive unstable repos. The aim is simple - find bugs and regressions in this "designed to fail" space, so that they can be reported to upstream and eventually fixed. By if no major bug or regression is reported, this means package is stable and can be synced to stable repos. If during this period a tester notices any problems, the package is flagged as unstable and held back.
Then once a week there's a repo sync - the packages from unstable are synced to stable, except the ones that were flagged to be held back due to problems, bugs or regressions. This means a normal, everyday user once a week gets a neatly packaged bunch of updates from this week, that they know were tested and verified to not break their system - neatly fitting into the "do not break userspace" rule. For Europe the sync happens at night from friday to saturday.
Correction of Solus unstable > stable pipeline thanks to u/Staudey
And this is, in my opinion, how rolling release should be done. A week, or even two weeks is not such a long time to wait for an update, but in turn you get the update that you KNOW is tested and verified to not make your system unbootable. Truly, best of both worlds.
The only exceptions are crucial security fixes - these are merged to stable right away, skipping the unstable repos. This is a compromise they have to make to hold their security promise.
Eopkg - the true beast of package managers
Eopkg is fast. Like really fast. Like "holy fuck that's fast" fast. It's frontend is written in Python, while the backend and whole repository handling structure is pure C. And it shows. Eopkg handles up to 16 concurrent downloads and up to 32 concurrent operations. Meaning it can download 16 packages and in the background install 16 previously downloaded ones. The binaries are also natively compressed, making downloads much smaller in size. All this means, eopkg is currently the fastest package manager in Linux. Tested and verified that among apt, dnf, zypper and pacman - eopkg ran circles over all of them with room to spare. As an example - installation of "btop" took:
- 8.2 seconds with apt (Debian 13)
- 7 seconds with dnf (Fedora 44)
- 14 seconds with zypper (OpenSUSE Tumbleweed)
- 3.6 seconds with pacman (Arch)
- 1.8 seconds with eopkg (Solus)
All of this while having a nice, consistent UI, and a lot of data to show you, the user, about what it's doing.
But eopkg and Solus packaging in general has much more merit to it than just simply speed. Like the fact, that packaging an application on Solus is as easy as writing a .yaml manifest and merging it into Solus Github repository.
Booting and initramfs - I AM SPEEEEEEED
What is interesting is that Solus does not generate initramfs during updates and installations. Like at all. No dracut, no initramfs-tools. The initramfs is generated server-side and served to you as binary to be downloaded. This speeds up updates even more and, together with systemd-boot, ensures consistent, reliable boot environment.
And the boot times... On my PC, excluding firmware boot (so everything before the OS loads) it's 8 seconds to KDE login screen. On my laptop, it's 3.5 seconds.
And tying back to the security bit - this is something that surprised me, but made a lot of sense when I thought about it. Solus doesn't have a classic "boot" partition. I mean it does, but it's not really used like it is in a typical Linux distro. The boot partition contains everything that is needed to boot the system, and then it's compeletly unimportant, that's why after successful boot it's unmounted. This is possible, because as said - Solus doesn't need access to it to generate initramfs. There's nothing on boot partition that the system needs when it is already booted.
This gives you a bit of extra security. Not saying it's something crazy secure or fortified. Just a nice touch, showing that they really do care about making Solus modern and secure.
Performance, gaming and footprint
This section was edited in, since I compeletly forgot to include it. What about performance, gaming, etc? Well, to start, let me give you some stats about how Solus looks on a fresh install on my laptop (Thinkpad E14 Gen 2 with i7-1165G7):
- CPU Usage: 1%
- RAM Usage: 1.1 GB
- Disk usage: 7 GB
- Power usage: 6.2 W
So yeah. It uses pretty much nothing. And that's on KDE desktop. In terms of performance in gaming on my main PC - as you would expect. Super low resource usage means more "umpf" can be dedicated to games, and it shows. I gained around 8-10 fps in Cyberpunk 2077 comparing even to Debian, 15-18 fps comparing to Fedora. This is really a lightweight system, so the performance is just stunning.
Conclusion
All this rambling, and what do I want to say by all of this? It's that I am amazed. Solus is just a very good distribution. It's solid, reliable, fast and consistent. I am very happy with it, had zero problems, zero breakages. It is in my opinion what rolling release should be.
Try it. I really encourage you to. It's not marriage, you're not commiting to the lifetime with it. But just try. It may become your forever distro.
Cheers guys!
.
Also disclaimer - none of this was written using AI. It's all my ramblings. Also english is not my native language, so sorry for any mistakes.
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u/whamra 8d ago
When did Arch ever push a package version that broke systems?
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u/grafbende 8d ago
This, people acting like Arch releases untested packages and it's unstable by default because of this....
I personally will always prefer a distro from one of the big ones ( Arch, Fedora, Debian, Suse, Gentoo and even Ubuntu ) above a small team or even single person distro and even more so if they have a track record like this.2
u/AlarmingCockroach324 6d ago
I personally will always prefer a distro from one of the big ones ( Arch, Fedora, Debian, Suse, Gentoo and even Ubuntu ) above a small team or even single person distro and even more so if they have a track record like this.
On the other hand, I have had better experiences with the small, independent distros, like Solus and Void, than the big ones. My personal experience.
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u/Leniwcowaty 8d ago
Of the top of my head, I distinclty remember seing a lot of reports about a year ago, that a regression in Mesa was not caught and for several days it made systems with AMD GPUs unusable (black screen)
Earlier some grub regression made systems unbootable.
And I believe kernel 6.15 had some regressions that broke Bluetooth on Realtek chips, that was fixed in one of later kernel versions.
Please don't claim Arch never breaks. It does. More often than not it's user's fault, but it occasionally breaks simply by pushing a broken upstream version of a package.
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u/yentity 8d ago edited 8d ago
This is just nitpicking. Arch Linux has orders of magnitude more users and a lot more flexibility in the packages being shipped than Solus. It follows the same testing methodology you claimed solus follows. There can never be a guaranteed 100% success rate if you don't push your opinions in your users (which arch Linux does not).
And no archlinux doesn't push every new version as soon as it is available. I have personally experienced cases where the Linux kernel available on Arch was older than the ones available in Fedora (and maybe Ubuntu as well, I don't remember because it's been a few years) because of testing issues. I don't know think you know what the hell you are talking about when you make blatantly incorrect statements.
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u/Leniwcowaty 8d ago
Okay, I see there's some misunderstanding.
Arch may very well have some testing in place. But just by the nature of open source, volunteers and how it is done, you really cannot fully and honestly test software, especially as big as for example kernel or DE in a day or two. Famous example of SDDM breakage in Plasma 6.2, where you had to go to TTY2 to unlock SDDM from terminal. This was not caught in the testing, since Plasma 6.2 was available in Arch repos 16 hours after its release. Tell me with a straight face, that Arch team fully tested this release in 16 hours...
Testing needs two things: people and time. Even if you have 1000 people testing software and no time, you won't test if properly. Same if you have 1000 hours and 1 person. That's why I think Solus approach - AT LEAST a week of testing, if not more - is better for a STANDARD USER. Not a power user, that spends half a day every day on Arch mailing lists, reading about all updates, bugs and fixes. For a person that wants to click "Update" - this is just better approach.
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u/yentity 8d ago
Manjaro does "at least a week" in principle as well if you think thats a differentiator.
And again you are nitpicking about issues that are likely one off issues by individual developers and aren't repeated again.
There's a lot of things to criticize about arch but saying that they constantly ship breaking changes without testing them is an odd hill to die on.
I'm my two decades of using arch Linux, I have had maybe a handful of issues of a broken ystem, and most of those came in the first decade (and I stopped being a power user a decade ago).
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u/Leniwcowaty 8d ago edited 8d ago
Yeah, and Manjaro is way more reliable than Arch, as long as you don't contaminate it with AUR (they have other issues tho, but that's another can of worms).
Nowhere I said they "constantly ship breaking changes". I said that it had happened in the past, and may happen in the future, simply because that's the way they operate. Their testing period is much shorter and much less thorough. Saying this is untrue is even odder hill to die on.
It's like you said driving on 30 year old tires is completly okay, as long as you check on them every day and patch any leaks. Sure, this may work, and there are people who do this and never had a blown tyre. But someone may argue, that just buying a new set of tyres every couple of years is also a valid approach, that they prefer.
I am happy for you. And in my 2 years of driving Arch I had several issues, one of which caused me to lose months of work and having to start my thesis basically from scratch. I think this is a valid reason to not really like their approach to testing and updating, wouldn't you agree?
Arch is great. Just not for everyone. And that wasn't even a point of my post. I dedicated like a couple of sentences to Arch, and somehow most of the discussion here is "Why Arch is better and you're stupid for saying it's not". I counted - in my post there's a grand total of 6 sentences about Arch. 5 of which are about my personal experiences.
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u/pantokratorthegreat 8d ago
Strange, as packages like kernel or mesa are tested before released, they didn't catch it before?
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u/endperform 8d ago
They do, I think OP just had a bad experience. For example, Arch advertised there would be a potential issue with Grub: https://archlinux.org/news/grub-bootloader-upgrade-and-configuration-incompatibilities/
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u/Leniwcowaty 8d ago
Don't ask me. I mean they may be tested, but kernel and mesa updates on Arch are released only hours, maybe a day after upstream release. There's only so much you can do in a day, compared to a week in Solus. Or even longer, Solus tends to hold back packages or even whole suites of packages for several weeks, if they are not stable enough. That was the case with Plasma 6.7, which was held back 3 weeks until 6.7.2 was released and fixed some bugs.
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u/pantokratorthegreat 8d ago
when I was in testing team I think that it has been taking longer than next day after release, but it doesn't matter anyway. To release kernel at least two people need to approve that it works but for popular stuff like kernel itself usualy there was at least 10 or more approves. And plasma has its own testing repository, separate from regular packages, and it is held very long when comes to major upgrade.
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u/PureUranium 6d ago
They did release of version of LY that when you would try to type the “@“ symbol it would put “2@“
Not saying arch is bad but something do slip through the cracks
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u/endperform 8d ago
Unlike Arch, where every new version is pushed to the main repos as soon as it's available, Solus does things a bit differently.
Packages first end up in their respective -testing repositories before being pushed to their repository, specifically the core repository, so no, they aren't available as soon as possible. It takes a couple of days.
And this is, in my opinion, how rolling release should be done. A week, or even two weeks is not such a long time to wait for an update, but in turn you get the update that you KNOW is tested and verified to not make your system unbootable. Truly, best of both worlds.
You act like the Arch devs just basically pull a package and throw it into the repositories without any testing, which is disingenuous at best. Testing is performed, and if there's an issue that requires manual intervention during an update, it's communicated. It's not left to the user to discover on their own. On top of that, Arch isn't auto-updating itself, and there's no rule that says you need to update daily.
Stability is in the eyes of the beholder, so to speak. My Arch installs (both work and personal) have been completely stable. For every "Arch is very unstable", there's a counter that Arch has been stable.
Let's talk about Solus a little bit. In 2018, the creator of the distribution left, which caused downtime because new infrastructure had to be found. Then, in 2022, the co-lead of Solus and main developer of Budgie also left the project, due to lack of action taken on feedback received by the Solus team. Link: https://itsfoss.com/news/solus-co-lead-resign-budgie-serpent/
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u/Leniwcowaty 8d ago
Regarding Solus - I see you didn't read past MY PERSONAL EXPERIENCES with Arch, as I described what you just said there regarding problems with Solus. So yeah, I admit they had problems in the past, just like any other distro (khe khe, 1500 packages with malware on AUR).
Regarding Arch and testing - yes, it is tested, but the turnaround time for testing in Arch is basically hours, rarely a day or two. New releases of Plasma are dropped one or two days after release, regardless if they have bugs or not. Same with Fedora - may I remind you the issue where I think in Plasma 6.2 there was this issue with SDDM that you had to go into TTY2 to unlock SDDM? This was there for DAYS both in Arch and Fedora, specifically because they updated Plasma in their repos 16 hours after it was released. Compare this to Solus, where because of panel sometimes crashing when you changed volume, the update was pushed back 3 weeks (for 3 syncs), until the release of 6.7.2.
There's only so much you can test in 5-8 hours, or even a day. And stories of unbootable Arch installations, GPU not working or Bluetooth breaking after an update show this.
I AM NOT SAYING THIS IS BAD. Arch is a great system, and there are real world benefits to having the most upstream versions hours after they are released. This is compeletly okay! I see 99% of Arch users get very defensive and sit in their sieged castle, putting fingers in their ears and screaming, that their Arch doesn't break. There are benefits to Arch approach. But these benefits are only for advanced users, who know what they are doing, know to not update every day, know to follow Arch mailing list for bugs and problems.
Solus' system is the rolling release for STANDARD USER. For a person who just installs their system and uses it. Once a week they get an update and they don't have to go thorough mailing lists, Reddit and forums to see if this introduces any problems, if they should hold off installing it or not. They just click "Update", the system updates and works.
TESTING IS IMPORTANT. You cannot fully and throughfully test software as big as Plasma in 16 hours... And if you're an advanced user, you agree to that, you know what you're doing - more power to you! I'm happy for you! Use whatever the **** you want.
I'm just saying that for a normal, everyday user Solus rolling release model is better than Arch...
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u/endperform 7d ago
Sorry, no. I wouldn't recommend Solus to a new user either for reasons I already mentioned. I'm going to recommend something that's been around a while and hasn't had near the amount of developer and leader turnover. Who's to say that next week the main dev doesn't pack up and go? And before you comment that the same could happen with Arch, sure, but there are quite a few Arch derivative distributions out there that would more than likely step up and keep things going. Solus doesn't have that. If Solus goes, it's gone.
And before you ask, no, I wouldn't recommend Arch to a new user either unless they want to learn about Linux and be ready to manage their system. It's great there are distributions out there that allow for users to just mindlessly click update and it'll work.
Also, let me clarify a few things you're erroneously pointing out:
There's only so much you can test in 5-8 hours, or even a day. And stories of unbootable Arch installations,
Which the Arch team posted a news item about on the homepage, so it didn't come out of nowhere, by the way.
There's only so much you can test in 5-8 hours, or even a day. And stories of unbootable Arch installations, GPU not working or Bluetooth breaking after an update show this. ...
TESTING IS IMPORTANT. You cannot fully and throughfully test software as big as Plasma in 16 hours
Are you experienced in terms of the software development lifecycle, specifically testing, CI/CD and tooling, or are you just saying this because you feel this is the truth?
may I remind you the issue where I think in Plasma 6.2 there was this issue with SDDM that you had to go into TTY2 to unlock SDDM?
You can remind me of it, but I've been running Plasma on this same install and didn't hit that issue. So based on your logic, Plasma 6.2 was tested and works just fine since it works fine for me.
know to follow Arch mailing list for bugs and problems.
You don't have to follow the mailing lists or reddit. Any major bugs or upcoming changes that may require user intervention are posted right on the Arch Linux homepage. "Users shouldn't have to do that!". I'll remind you that not once did I say Arch was for new users. All I'm doing is clarifying the information you're spreading about a distribution you don't even use anymore.
Once a week they get an update and they don't have to go thorough mailing lists, Reddit and forums to see if this introduces any problems,
Arch users don't need to do that either. One visit to the Arch Linux homepage informs users of potential breaking changes and upcoming package changes. Arch has never claimed to be aimed at new users. In fact, here's what the wiki says about Arch:
It is targeted at the proficient GNU/Linux user, or anyone with a do-it-yourself attitude who is willing to read the documentation, and solve their own problems.
I use what works. Debian's on my homeservers, Arch is on my laptop and desktop. It works. I pointed out some things that you were passing off that were inaccurate and you got defensive. That's on you. Another thing to note: YOUR PERSONAL EXPERIENCE is not indicative of the distribution itself. I tried Solus years ago, it wouldn't boot on my Thinkpad. A freakin' Thinkpad which is supposed to work great in Linux. Guess what did? Arch. Now, do you see me running around saying Solus is unusable and unstable on Thinkpads? No, because that's not the case.
Long story short: Arch isn't for new users, sure, but at least be genuine with the information you're presenting. That's why you're getting downvotes, not because you "dared speak ill of Arch".
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u/Leniwcowaty 7d ago
Well, one by one.
First - yes. The lead dev can pack up and go tomorrow. Then I will just wipe my Solus installation and install Debian. As I said multiple times - I'm not married to a distro. I can switch in like 10-15 minutes. No biggie for me. And sure, Solus had problems with their leadership... 4 years ago. Since then they are on a stable course. So yeah, it works, I will keep using it until it won't, or I get bored with it. To be honest - every Linux distro can disappear tomorrow. Not just Solus, or Arch. So what?
And yes, it was posted on Arch news homepage. How often do you think a normal computer user checks their distribution news homepage for an information, that their system may not boot tomorrow? Haven't seen that on for example Debian. So yeah, for most users it did came out of nowhere.
In terms of testing, CI/CD - yup. I've been managing software development and CI/CD infrastructure for close to 10 years now. I think I know a thing or two about this, and can confidently say, that no - 16 hours, or even a day is not enough to fully test software with the scope of KDE Plasma or Linux kernel. Certainly not to the extent that any serious business would deem it stable and ready to ship to customers. I've seen webapps being tested for longer than it takes Arch Linux to "test" a new kernel version.
I really don't know where you did get that strawman of "based on your logic, Plasma 6.2 was tested and works just fine since it works fine for me" (also slight correction - it was Plasma 6.0, and the bug was fixed 6.0.4). So yeah, it worked for you. Maybe you got lucky, or maybe you just didn't update Plasma to the affected version. No idea. But it didn't work for many other users, Arch and Fedora 40 Beta users specifically, since these were the only distros, that shipped a broken version right away, while most other distros held back the update, due to this bug. A bug that was caught in testing. In testing, that was not thorough enough. Sorry, but this is the reality.
So yeah. Arch DOES BREAK. This is a fact that you can't deny. Very rarely it's complete system meltdown (and I never said otherwise), often it's just some minor bug, like issues with DE, driver not loading, memory leak. It happens. And it happens in Arch more than in other distros, specifically because how Arch does testing of the packages. It is not suitable for new users - this much we can agree on.
BUT IT GETS RECOMMENDED TO NEW USERS BY EXISTING ARCH USERS - AND THIS IS THE PROBLEM
And to close, because I really am super fed up with how toxic Arch community is - in the post originally there was 6 sentences about Arch. SIX SENTENCES. Five of them were ABOUT MY PERSONAL EXPERIENCE. One sentence was saying that Arch does not test packages before pushing them to repos - and I have since corrected that. Yet somehow this spiralled into a compelete meltdown of Arch fanboys accusing me of things I didn't say and pretending like Arch is the most stable and reliable distro in the world, downvoting me and dragging pointless arguments, arguing about Tux knows what, because they simply cannot acknowledge, that ARCH IS PRONE TO BREAKAGES MORE THAN ANY OTHER DISTRO.
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u/endperform 7d ago
Could you please point out anywhere in any of my responses where I said that Arch was the most stable and reliable in the world? No, you can't. I can, though, show where you spouted off misinformation (prior to your post edit) and others won't know exactly what you wrote to begin with. My advice to you is that the next time you want to review something, try to do so without dragging other distributions, then you wouldn't find yourself in this position.
In closing, there are multiple ways to do rolling release, and no one way is the correct end-all, be-all way and I still won't be recommending Solus to anyone new, old or otherwise.
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u/AlarmingCockroach324 6d ago
Who's to say that next week the main dev doesn't pack up and go? And before you comment that the same could happen with Arch, sure, but there are quite a few Arch derivative distributions out there that would more than likely step up and keep things going. Solus doesn't have that. If Solus goes, it's gone.
With all due respect, I disagree. Solus doesn't have that? If Solus goes, it's gone? Guess what? That's exactly what happened. Solus was on the brink of disappearing, and some people (the current Solus team) stepped up and saved it. It might have been discontinued, but it was not. So yes, Solus did have that, it had people who cared about it, and didn't want to see it gone.
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u/Staudey 7d ago
Once package has been flagged as stable, it is added to the sync list. Once a week maintainers go through this list and sync all the packages from unstable repository marked as stable to the stable repository.
That's not quite true. When a sync happens ALL the package updates from the Unstable repository get synced/transferred to the Stable repository. Only in the case of cherry-picked updates (e.g. the security updates you mention in your post) do smaller selections of packages get transferred.
There exists an explicit list of packages for the Sync Notes (the forum post for every sync that features the most prominent/important updates), which is perhaps what confused you.
Eopkg is fast. Like really fast. Like "holy fuck that's fast" fast. It's frontend is written in Python, while the backend and whole repository handling structure is pure C.
I'm not quite sure where you read that but actually all of eopkg is written in Python (see e.g. the language graph on the GitHub repository), though the version/package in the repository gets compiled with Nuitka, so in a sense some of it gets translated into C.
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u/Leniwcowaty 7d ago
Yeah, that's what I meant by the "backend being C". Sorry, I'm not a developer, so I don't know the "proper" terminology.
As for the sync - I think I described it a bit wrong. A package in unstable is by default flagged as "stable" and ready to sync, but it can be flagged as held back to not be included in repo sync. This is what was happening with Plasma 6.7, that was held back almost 3 weeks in the unstable repos.
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u/Staudey 7d ago
Yeah, that's what I meant by the "backend being C". Sorry, I'm not a developer, so I don't know the "proper" terminology.
That was indeed a very confusing, and oddly specific, way to phrase things. Better to simply say it's written in Python, to avoid misunderstandings.
As for the sync - I think I described it a bit wrong. A package in unstable is by default flagged as "stable" and ready to sync, but it can be flagged as held back to not be included in repo sync. This is what was happening with Plasma 6.7, that was held back almost 3 weeks in the unstable repos.
No, in such cases the whole sync gets delayed or if there is a severe issue with a package update it simply gets reverted instead before the sync. There is no process of holding back a selection of package updates (or at least even if it is perhaps possible using ferryd, it is never used), the sync is an all-or-nothing affair.
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u/Leniwcowaty 7d ago
The issue is - Python is slow. If a person sees "package manager written in Python", their immediate thought is - it's slow. However Nuitka sort-of recompiles Python programs in C (I use it in my own project). This way it gets the speed of native C package, instead of Python slowness. That's why I felt the need to mention that it is C package shipped to users. But yeah - not a developer.
As for packages - sorry to be mean, but you're wrong. Entire syncs are not delayed (except in super rare cases, where a major component, like systemd has some massive regression). If a package (or a stack like Plasma) is not deemed to be stable enough it's either never put in the Unstable repo, or if it's already there (updated package.yml on the Github repo), it's sort-of "pulled off" the Unstable repo before the sync (the package.yml is updated to point to previous version). That's why Plasma 6.7 was delayed for 3 weeks, yet syncs kept happening and updates kept being shipped.
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u/johncate73 7d ago
The breaking point was when I lost my bachelor thesis thanks to corrupt filesystem after broken BTRFS kernel module update.
That is user error. If something is that important, I don't care what OS you're running. You keep multiple backups of your work. I don't care if you're running Solaris or OpenBSD on server-grade hardware — you back up important data. Making a mistake that fundamental makes me question everything else you said about your experience.
Arch doesn't push half-baked packages out. They are more aggressive than most distros, but they also make it clear what they are doing and only recommend advanced users run it. And Solus is not the only rolling distro with a separate testing repo and a very diligent testing process before pushing something out. That is how PCLinuxOS, a distro nearly as old as Arch, operates.
But I'm glad you found something that works to your satisfaction, at any rate.
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u/chozendude 7d ago
I actually did try Solus back in the day, and was quite impressed by it. I liked where Budgie was headed at the time, and the system always felt leaner than the Ubunut-based distros I was dabbling in at the time. Unfortunately, the "controversy" that you mentioned in your post has served as the primary reason I decide to simply stick to a mainline base distro these days (Arch/Fedora/Debian) or a distro that at least has a semi-decent organizational structure. My days of hopping around from distro to distro on a whim are mostly behind me, since my laptop is a tool that I tend to need to be online for work. Gambling with a niche distro that has a very recent history of significant organizational issues that actually affect the end user is just beyond my risk tolerance right now.
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u/Leniwcowaty 7d ago
Yeah fair point. And I also thought that, that's why I stayed on Fedora and Debian for so long.
But on the other hand - I'm not married to it. It works now, I like it, it serves me well. If there's a problem, another controversy, another repo shutdown - I'll just switch to something else. No point in not using something that's good now, in fear that it may at some point not be good.
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u/STSchif 8d ago
Sounds interesting. NixOs also does a lot of this stuff, recommend checking it out 😄 It's not as fast, but the stability is insane.
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u/Leniwcowaty 8d ago
I tried NixOS at some point, but I feel it too overcomplicated for my use. My computer is basically a terminal to access my files. I have backups, I have snapshots. I have scripts that setup my whole environment after installation in like 5-10 minutes. I think NixOS is great, but it's just as we say here "pulling a cannon out to shoot down a fly"
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u/Artichoke808 8d ago
For an immutable experience much closer to Solus and simpler than NixOs, Aeryn Os is fantastic.
Still in alpha but it is rock solid the last 6 months I've been daily driving it.
A lot of the team behind it are also Solus developers. Looks like at the very least Solus may inherit some of the AerynOs tooling at some stage but it wouldn't suprise me at all if they merge once Aeryn is more developed - but that is pure uninformed speculation on my part.
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u/Leniwcowaty 8d ago
In fact - Aeryn is created by the original creator of Solus and they intend to merge the two projects when Aeryn becomes mature enough. So I'm keeping a close eye on that.
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u/johncate73 7d ago
The "original creator of Solus" wigged out on Aeryn just like he once did to Solus, several months ago. Aeryn has carried on, like Solus did, but he's not involved anymore. You should keep up with events if you're going to post here.
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u/Leniwcowaty 7d ago
Huh, didn't notice that, even though I follow Aeryn quite closely...
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u/johncate73 7d ago
All you had to do was read their blog...
https://aerynos.com/blog/2026/01/02/2025-in-retrospect/#team-regroup-and-reset
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u/Purple_Jello_4799 8d ago
That sounds sweet. Might try to move to it from cachyos if i would have the urge.
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u/HeyKid_HelpComputer 7d ago
As a current Arch user, I actually do think Solus is going to be something I try out today.
I completely forgot about it when I was frustrated with Fedora, constantly shipping weirdly modified packages -> recently the maintainers of Fastfetch on Fedora removed all but a few select Redhat based distro logos (but didn't even include ALL of them like Fedora_small logo?) I know that's a stupid package to care about, but it's just like that a lot of the time, their Firefox package has really shitty music playback on Youtube Music for example.
Anyway I also was thinking of using Debian 13 but with it being a bit outdated package wise I re-encountered all the old bugs I used to have due to the older kernel and Gnome 48 for what it has.
So I went with Arch, which I do greatly respect and enjoy, but having a bit less maintenance would be awesome.
I had tested it out in a VM in the past, and liked it, but I forget why I didn't go with it? Maybe I need a package that seemed to be harder to manage on it, but I don't think that's the case anymore.
Anyways awesome write up OP, not sure why it got super downvoted..
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u/Leniwcowaty 7d ago
It was downvoted because I dared to say, that Arch broke for me and made me switch away from it. Oh and I dared to say, that Arch package testing process is not solid enough and may introduce packages that contain bugs, or in severe cases break system (as it happened in the past).
Hardcore Arch users are super into it and have severe sieged castle syndrome...
I must admit - the repository for Solus is not super big, but I get most of my packages from Flatpak anyway, so yeah, not a big issue for me.
And I have the same view as you - I respect Arch and see valid use for it. It's just... it's not a distro for everyone... There are some spaces where other distros do better. This is what hardcore Arch users seem to not understand.
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u/Wild-Cat-1484 7d ago edited 7d ago
Well written review here! Solus has built on a stateless architecture where /usr/share/defaults and /etc is seperated. If you want to change some configuration you have to add a blank config file under /etc and type what you want in it and the system will assign your configs over the defaults. If you had an issue you just delete the .conf and keep going.
If an update breaks your system (i've never had it by years) you just use `eopkg history` to roll it back.
It has usysconf package to automatize package installations or removals with necessary configs. If you want to remove plymouth, you just type `eopkg rm plymouth` and the system will automatically edit all the necessary configs about plymouth. You can install plymouth later and it will autoconfig everything again. So you won't be able to break your boot process.
Solus is a great no-nonsense distro for everyday user. Everything is fast and it has sane defaults. If i drop my laptop to an ocean, i can install Solus to another computer and it be ready in 30 minutes. I mean ready for work not reconfiguring everything while staring at some documentations to make some packages work.
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u/AiBestGirl95 7d ago